Note: A lot of recycled stuff lately.
But GOOD recycled stuff….
It is almost
impossible not to admire, even love, James
Stewart, the consummate film actor whose career spanning more than 50 years
included some of the most memorable and beloved films ever made. Stewart died on June 2, 1997 at the age of 89
in his long time Beverly Hills home.
His on-screen
persona as an American everyman,
sometimes befuddled, sometimes angry, but always at heart decent was rooted in
his own experience and personality. He
himself said that often, “I just play Jimmy Stewart.” This belies the subtlety of acting which made
everything he did seem natural, even effortless.
Stewart was
a product of a classic American small town, Indiana, Pennsylvania, born the son of the local druggist in 1908. He worshiped his father, was a Boy Scout, and inherited his mother’s
musicality picking up the accordion—a life long passion. He tinkered with model airplanes and dreamed
of attending the Naval Academy and
becoming an aviator—dreams his father discouraged because he wanted his son to
join him in the drug store which had been in the family for three
generations. He was sent away to a prep
school where he excelled at academics, athletics and extracurricular activities—including a spin in the drama club.
Stewart’s
father insisted that he attend Princeton
and give up his dreams of aviation and he obediently complied, apparently
without rancor. He studied and excelled
in architecture and his thesis—on airport design—won him a fellowship to
graduate school. But he had become seriously
involved in college theatrics and glee club in addition to serving as head
cheerleader and spent hours haunting local movie houses.
Graduating
in 1932 at the height of the Depression,
he was invited to join a noted summer stock company, the University Players for a season on Cape Cod. Although he got no
more than small supporting roles and bit parts, he became immersed in the
theater experience, rooming with director Joshua
Logan, and two other young actors Henry
Fonda and Myron McCormick.
That fall,
resisting his father’s pleas to come home to the drug store, Steward decided to
give Broadway a try, rooming again with Fonda.
The two would share a lifelong affectionate friendship despite once
having a fist fight over the New Deal—Fonda was a liberal Democrat
and Stewart maintained his father’s small town Republican
conservatism. Fonda reportedly won the
fight but the two decided for the sake of friendship never again to discuss
politics. And apparently they never did.
His professional
career got off to a good start with a small role in the moderate hit Goodbye Again with other members of the University Players,
including old roomy McCormick. But the
Depression was as tough on actors as anyone else. Theaters closed or converted to movie houses. Plays that could not pull packed houses were
closed quickly rather than building audiences.
Stewart reported that over the next two years he worked a total of three
months. Still, he hung on and continued
to resist going home.
In 1934 Fonda
was called to Hollywood on the strength of his Broadway hit The Farmer Takes a Wife. Soon he arranged a screen test for Stewart
who signed with MGM as a contract
player for $350 a week for seven years.
That money looked pretty good after years as a starving actor, but he
was kept to figure for most of his pre-war films, including his first big
hits.
The studio was
at something of a loss as to what to do with the 6’2” gangling actor with the
modest demeanor. His first small role in
1935 was in Spencer Tracy’s first
MGM picture The Murder Man
which was not a box office success. The
next year he got noticed as Jeanette
McDonalds outlaw brother in a big hit, the operetta Rose Marie. Parts,
mostly in B movies, got bigger. In 1936
he got third billing in a major studio release and big hit, After the Thin Man with William Powell and Myrna Loy.
While working
steadily at the studio, his star rising, Stewart cut a figure as a lady’s
man. Clubbing with pals Fonda and Gary Cooper he regularly dated some of
Hollywood’s most attractive starlets. He
had a brief romance with recently divorced Ginger
Rogers and had affair with Margaret Sullavan, Fonda former wife and
a former University Player herself.
Already a well established leading lady Sullavan rehearsed with Stewart
and urged him to be comfortable in his persona and to use his drawl and stammer
naturally in his parts instead of trying to hide them. She campaigned to get him cast opposite her
in the Universal Picture’s 1936 Next Time We Love. Four years later they would team up
again for two memorable films, the romantic comedy The Shop Around the Corner, and the early anti-Nazi melodrama, The Mortal Storm.
Through
Sullavan he met high-powered agent Leland
Howard who guided his career.
Sullavan later married Howard and all remained close friends. Howard worked to get Stewart loaned out to
other studios as often as possible where he could make substantially more money
than his MGM contract allowed.
In 1938 he had
a brief, reportedly tumultuous affair with the fading queen of MGM Norma Shearer, the
widow of studio production boss. To get
out of the heat, he was relieved to be loaned to Columbia for Frank Capra’s screen
adaptation of You Can’t Take it With You, the play by George S. Kaufman and Moss
Hart. Stewart starred opposite Jean Arthur in a stellar cast that
included Lionel Barrymore, Edward
Arnold, and a young Ann Miller. Capra was impressed he called Stewart,
“...probably the best actor who's ever hit the screen.” The film was a sensation and was a rare
comedy to win the Academy Award for Best
Picture.
The next year Capra teamed Stewart and
Arthur again in the idealistic political comedy-drama Mr. Smith Goes to
Washington. Stewart received the
first of five Oscar nominations for
the role and officially entered the ranks of A list stars.
Despite his success his parents, worried
over reports about his active love life pressured him to come home and escape
sinful Hollywood. Instead Stewart took a
short break for an unpublicized trip to Europe.
He was on the continent when war broke out in 1939. Over the next two years he worked feverishly
in picture after picture at MGM and on loan out.
On
loan to Universal again he teamed with sultry German bombshell Marlene Dietrich for the western spoof Destry
Rides Again, in which he played a pacifist law man finally driven to
take up the gun—an unsubtle lesson on idealistic American isolationism in the face of the Nazi war machine. It was Stewart’s only pre-war western and
ignited a real life romance between its stars.
1940 would be Stewart’s busiest film
year. In addition to his two re-matches
with Margaret Sullavan, he was cast as
part of a quadrilateral romantic tangle with Katherine Hepburn, Cary Grant,
and John Howard in George Cukors’s classic comedy The Philadelphia Story. Stewart won the Academy Award for Best Actor in 1940, much to his
embarrassment, beating out his buddy Henry
Fonda’s memorable turn as Tom Joad in
The
Grapes of Wrath. Stewart sent
the Oscar home to Indiana where his father proudly kept it on display in his
store window for many years. It also
dimmed demands that Stewart come home.
Taking advantage of his new star power,
MGM used him in some quickly produced, mostly second rate romantic
comedies. In the big budget musical Ziegeld
Girl he played opposite Lana
Turner as the doomed chorine in a film that also featured Judy Garland, Heddy Lamarr, and elaborates production numbers.
Late in 1940 Stewart was drafted. Unlike other actors, he was eager to go. His family had a long tradition of military
service—both grandfathers fought in the Civil
War and his father was in both the Spanish
American War and World War I. The draft notice coincided with the end
of his seven year MGM contract so he felt no constraints. Most importantly, the draft notice gave him
an opportunity to fulfill and old dream.
Stewart had taken up flying and gotten his pilots certificate in
1935. In ’38 he got certified in
multi-engine aircraft and got his commercial license. He often flew to Pennsylvania to visit his
parents. By the time he was drafted he
had racked up over 400 solo hours in the air.
It was no suprise when he wrangled and
appointment to the Army Air Force despite
his lanky frame and being 5 lbs. underweight to meet the requirement for flight
school. He officially entered the Army as a private in March 1941. Except for some training and propaganda
shorts Steward would not make another film for five years.
After completing his pilot training,
Stewart was awarded his wings and commissioned a second lieutenant in January
1942, only a month after Pearl
Harbor. Considered over age for
combat flying, he was assigned to California air fields as a flight instructor. The Air Corps also encouraged him to make
radio and personal appearances in support of the war effort. He made a short recruiting film, Winning
Your Wings with John Huston’s First Motion Picture Unit which General Hap Arnold credited with
attracting 10,000 new Air Force recruits.
Stewart
desperately wanted combat duty but continued to receive training assignments as
he advanced in rank. He trained
bombardiers in New Mexico and then became a B-17 pilot instructor. He was serving at Gowen Field in Boise,
Idaho when he heard through the grape vine that he would be taken off of
pilot status and assigned to War Bond tours. He appealed to his commanding officer to be
posted to combat.
In August 1943 he was finally assigned to
the 445th Bombardment Group at Sioux City AAB in Iowa as Operations Officer
of the 703rd Bombardment Squadron and then as its commander, at the rank of
Captain.
Flying B-24 Liberators the
unit arrived in England in December and began combat operations. While flying combat missions he was promoted
to Major and then assigned as Operations Officer to a troubled new unit,
the 453rd
Bombardment Group. To inspire
confidence in his crews, he flew lead in several raids deep into Nazi air
space. He ordered that these missions
not be counted as official because he was officially a staff officer. The real reason was so that these flights
would not be counted against the maximum number of combat mission he could fly
before being rotated home.
He was officially credited with 20 combat
missions, including the October 14, 1943 bombing of Schweinfurt, the center of the German ball bearing industry which
resulted in the loss of 60 aircraft out of 291 dispatched due to the lack of
fighter cover.
For his war time service Steward was twice
awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross,
the French Croix de Guerre, and the Air
Medal with three Oakleaf Clusters. By
the end of the war Stewart was a full Colonel and Chief of Staff of the 2nd Combat Bombardment Wing of the Eighth Air Force.
He continued his service after the war as
an Air Force Reserve rising to the
rank of Brigadier General. In 1966 he flew an unpublicized mission
as an observer on a B-52 raid over Vietnam.
After his retirement from the service in 1968, he was promoted to Major General by his close friend, President Ronald Regan.
Returning from the war he took time to
decompress, spending a lot of time with old pal Henry Fonda. He invested in Southwest Airlines, founded by Leland Howard who had retired as an
agent. He considered going into aviation
professionally because he felt his acting career may be over.
He returned from the war visibly aged, no
longer the boyish innocent. He declined
to renew a contract with MGM, instead signing with the powerful MCA talent agency which helped him
negotiate uncharted waters as an independent actor. Stewart turned down light
comedies of the pre-war type and war movies he felt were trying to exploit his
service. He also did not believe war
movies adequately captured the horror of the real experience. He almost never discussed his personal war
experiences.
Frank
Kapra offered him his first job, as George
Baily in the allegorical fantasy It’s a Wonderful Life. The film was an independent produced by
Kapra’s own company, Liberty Films.
Young Donna Reed was selected as the
female lead when Jean Arthur was unavailable.
Despite being nominated for five Academy Awards, including one for Stewart, the film received mixed reviews
and was a box office failure leading to the collapse of Kapra’s production
company. Audiences felt that instead of
the usual sunny Kapra fare, this film was too dark. Stewart felt responsible and began to have
doubts about his future.
It was only years later, after repeated
television showings, that the film became regarded as a classic, although it
was always Stewart’s personal favorite film.
His next film, Magic Town, a Kapra clone
by William Wellman was also a
critical and box office bust.
In 1947 he worked for Alfred Hitchock for the first time on Rope. Stewart played against type as an arrogant
intellectual who sees some of his class and caste theories warped by two former
students. Shot in real time on a single
set, the claustrophobic film unwound as Stewart slowly uncovers a Leapold and Loeb like thrill killing.
Although the film was a success, Stewart felt miscast.
The same year Call Northside 777 got
good notices in the suspenseful tale of a newspaper reporter investigating the
case of a wrongly convicted man. Other
films in this period, however bombed, and Stewart found few offers.
He decided to return to Broadway assuming
the role of Elwood P. Dowd in the
long running comedy Harvey. He was a
stunning success, reshaping the part so completely that he seemed to melt into
the eccentric millionaire who chats with an invisible six foot rabbit. The film version released 1950 garnered yet
another Academy Award nomination.
In 1949 the ladies man settled down to
marriage with Gloria Hatrick McLean,
a former model and a divorcee with two children. Stewart adopted her sons and the couple had
twin daughters in 1951. Stewart remained
devoted to and—unlike pals like Fonda, Gary Cooper, and John Wayne—strictly
monogamous with Gloria until the day of her death.
Despite the successful release of the
baseball biography The Stratton Story which paired him for the first time with June Allison, who would become his
“movie wife” in several ‘50’s films and set a pattern for based-on-true-story
films with her, Stewart felt his career was stagnating.
One day he got on the telephone and called
his agent. “Get me in Western,” he
pleaded. And he did. A two pictured deal for Universals included Harvey and one western. Because Universal balked at paying Stewarts
requested $200,000 per picture, Stewart agreed to take no salary and percentage
of the gate. Smart move.
The western was Winchester 73, both a
breakthrough role for Stewart and a new kind of oater with darker themes and a
flawed hero. It also brought Stewart
into collaboration for the first time with director Anthony Mann, with whom he would go on to make a series of landmark
westerns during the ‘50’s including Bend
of the River, 1952; The
Naked Spur, 1953; The Far
Country, 1954; and The Man
from Laramie, 1955. Mann set his
films against the backdrops of the Rocky
Mountains or Pacific Northwest
to distinguish them from John Ford’s signature
desert and Monument Valley backdrops. Stewart also began wearing the same grey
Stetson and riding the same dapple grey horse in this and almost all of his
subsequent westerns. By the end of the
decade that hat was pretty beat up.
Stewarts characters in these and other
westerns he made during the period were deeply flawed men, angry, bitter,
vengeance seeking, sometime greedy, often with shady, even criminal, pasts who
are eventually redeemed in some way by serving or protecting others. They represented a new era in adult,
psychological westerns. Mann also
collaborated with Stewart on other films, two of them with June Alison as a
loyal wife including The Glenn Miller Story, 1953; Thunder
Bay, the same year, a shrimpers vs. oilmen in the Louisiana gulf epic;
and Strategic
Air Command, 1955, a celebration of Stewart’s beloved Air Force.
With the release of Harvey, Winchester 73, and another western, Broken Arrow with its
rare sympathetic portrayal of Native
Americans, 1950 was the year Stewart finally became a top ten box office
star, a distinction he kept for more than a decade.
Stewart did a turn as a troubled clown,
appearing through almost the entire movie in makeup, in Cecil B. DeMille’s 1952
circus epic The Greatest Show on Earth, adjusted for inflation one of the
highest grossing films of all time and
the Academy Award winner for Best Picture—a widely acknowledged travesty
considering films that year included High Noon and Singin’ in the Rain. Still, the box office success added luster to
Stewarts appeal.
In 1954 Stewart renewed his association
with Hitchcock in the classic thriller Rear Window with Grace Kelley, who he later said was his
favorite leading lady and who became a close personal friend. Hitchcock tapped him again for the lead in a
remake of his own film, The Man Who Knew too Much with Doris Day in 1956.
They teamed for the final time in 1958 with
the psychological thriller Vertigo with Kim Novak. Although the film
is now considered a classic, rated the second best commercial film of all time
behind Citizen Kane in a 2002 Sight
& Sound magazine critics poll, the film at first confused critics
and was a box office failure. Hitchcock
bitterly blamed Stewart for being too old to play a leading man and they never
worked together again.
Stewart, insisted on aging gracefully in
most of his rolls. He let his hair go
grey. His only concession to cosmetics
was wearing a hair piece as he grew increasingly bald. The same year he was teamed again with Novak
for the occult comedy Bell, Book, and Candle after which
he never again allowed himself to be cast as a romantic leading man.
The ‘50’s came to a close with another
masterpiece, Otto Preminger’s court
room suspense drama Anatomy of a Murder, for which Stewart received the final of
his six nominations for Best Actor.
Unlike other movie stars, particularly
those of his stature, Steward did not shy away from television. He appeared
with some regularity on his real life neighbor Jack Benny’s program, on various variety shows doing skits, and occasionally as an actor on scripted programs. He also did a season of a western radio
program, The Six Shooter.
Stewart just liked to work.
In the early
‘60’s he joined John Ford for three
memorable westerns. During shooting on
the first, Two Rode Together
with Richard Widmark in 1961, he had
trouble with some of his dialoged because of advancing hearing loss due to
noise damage from his days as a bomber pilot and from gunfire on the set. The problem would worsen and plague him the
rest of his career.
The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance teamed him up with
Ford’s favorite actor and a close personal friend, John Wayne. In the black and white film the two actors
well into late middle age, reprised their youthful personas from films of the
‘30’s—Stewart the bumbling idealist and Wayne the strong silent hero. Critics were confused to see them playing
much younger men and the film was not terribly successful. Like It’s
a Wonderful Life and Vertigo, this box office failure has become
recognized as an all time classic, generally regarded as one of the top ten
westerns of all times.
The final
collaboration with Ford was in an extended cameo as Wyatt Earp in a memorable scene from the epic Cheyenne Autumn in which Stewart paid tribute to his old
friend Fonda by echoing his rocking back on a chair, feet up on a porch rail in
his own version of Earp in Ford’s My Darling Clementine.
Stewart also
appeared as a mountain man in the Cinerama
blockbuster How the West Was Won in
1964.
He signed a
multi-picture deal with 20th Century Fox
where he transitioned to family friendly comedies playing a flustered father
and kind of everyman. Critics used to
his darker films of the ‘50’s were not always kind to these films, but they
showed a return to the fine comic touch he had displayed earlier in his career. Anyone doubting just how good he was in them
should review two scenes from Mr.
Hobbs Takes a Vacation—when his large family descends upon his beach
house chatting away as they leave the old man to unload seeming tons of luggage
from their car, and when he is caught with a young grandson out to sea in a
tiny sailboat in a thick fog and he simultaneously re-assures the boy while
suppressing his own rising panic. Other films in this style included Take, She’s Mine and Dear Bridget with Stewart as the
father of a boy smitten by Bridget
Bardot.
Mid-decade,
with the Vietnam War heating up he
made a decidedly anti-war epic Shenandoah
followed by the aviation/survival adventure Flight of the Phoenix.
His final films
of the decade were all westerns—The
Rare Breed reuniting him with his Mr.
Hobbs costar Maureen O’Hara; Firecreek, a dark, violent film
with Stewart as a pacifistic part time Sheriff and Henry Fonda as the leader of
a pack of outlaws; and Bandalero with
Dean Martin.
Stewart was
deeply saddened when the step son he raised since age 5 Marine Corps Lt. Ronald McLean was killed in action
in Vietnam in 1969.
In 1970 Stewart
re-teamed with Fonda in a comic western tailored to the pair, The Cheyenne Social Club in
which they played down-at-the-heals cowboys who come into possession of a whore
house. The script slyly and
affectionately referenced the deep political difference between the two old
friends, the very liberal Fonda and the very conservative Stewart.
Feature films,
particularly his signature westerns, were getting taxing on the aging
Stewart. For the next seven years he
concentrated on television including series,
The Jimmy Stewart Show,
a situation comedy with Stewart as a professor at a small college ran the
1970-71 season on NBC. Producers
insisted on the name to tip audiences off that this was lighter fare even
though Stewart detested the nick name. Hawkins ran for the ’73-74
season on CBS with Stewart as a
small town lawyer investigating murders. The program ran as hour and a half
T.V. movies running in alternate weeks with adaption’s of the Black exploitation film Shaft. The show was critically acclaimed and
Stewart won a Golden Globe for his
performance, but it could not generate an audience alternating with such a
radically different program as Shaft.
Neither survived. Andy
Griffith later had a huge success with the same formula in Mattlock.
Sterwart appeared
as a guest on numerous talk and variety shows and competed with his wife Gloria
on Password. Most memorably he made several appearances
with Johnny Carson on the Tonight Show where he delighted
audiences with self-depreciating humor, reading original poetry in a mock
heroic style, and occasionally playing his beloved accordion.
In 1977 his old
friend John Wayne, who he knew to be deathly ill, cajoled him into playing a
doctor in his final film The
Shootist. Stewart had supporting
roles just three more live action features, Airport '77, the 1978 remake of The Big
Sleep with Robert Mitchum
and The Magic of Lassie. The
last film was beyond mediocre. Steward
complained that he made it because it was the only thing offered him without
nudity or excessive violence. Its
failure marked his retirement from features, but not from acting.
Through the
‘80’s he made a number of mostly forgettable T.V. movies including the first
film ever made for cable, Right of
Way with another aging icon, Bette
Davis. The deaths of close friends
Margaret Sullavan, Henry Fonda and Grace Kelly deeply affected him as he became
increasing frail himself.
Stewart was buoyed
by receiving an honorary Oscar for 50 years of films from another pal, Cary
Grant, in 1985. Previously he had also
received many lifetime achievement awards notably from the Screen Actor’s Guild 1968;
American Film Institute (AFI), 1983; and The Kennedy Center Honors, 1983.
He spent his
final years in declining health but campaigning against colorization of films,
promoting the Boy Scouts, contributing to Republican
candidates, visiting old friend Ronald Regan in the White House, and founding the American Spirit
Foundation to apply entertainment industry resources to developing
innovative approaches to public education and to assist the emerging democracy
movements in the former Communist Bloc
countries.
His last film role was as the voice of Sheriff Wylie Burp in the animated
feature An American Tail: Fievel Goes
West in 1991.
After his
beloved wife Gloria died in 1995, Steward deteriorated rapidly. He suffered several injuries and falls and
had surgery to replace a heart pacemaker, reportedly against his will. He stayed mostly in his room and may have
begun to suffer dementia. He died in his
home of a blood clot on the lung. His
last words were reportedly, “I’m going to see Gloria now.”
This blog entry
has reached epic proportions, may be a record in length. If you think it excessive scan the entry for
the movie titles in bold italic. If late
at night you happened on almost any of them while channel surfing you would
probably stop to watch transfixed.
That’s how good James Stewart was.
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